The Story and Its Writer Terms
Metafiction
Stories about writing language and the process of writing.
Antagonist
A character in some stories who is in real or imagined opposition to the protagonist or hero.
Anecdote
A brief, unified narration of one incident or episode, often humorous and often based on an actual event.
Minimalism
A literary style exemplifying economy and restraint.
Narrative
A sequence of events, often (but not always) unified and connected in storytelling.
Short Story
A short fictional prose narrative.
Ambiguity
A situation expressed in such a way as to admit more than one possible interpretation; also, the way of expressing such a situation.
Voice
A term referring to the specific manner chosen by the author to tell the story.
Didactic
A term used to describe a narrative or other work of art that is presented in order to teach a specific lesson, convey a moral, or inspire and provide a model for proper behavior.
Impressionism
A way of writing in which an author presents characters and events in a highly subjective and personal light, freely admitting an authorial POV and denying any claim of objectivity.
Image
A word or group of words used to give a concrete representation, either literal or figurative, of a sensory experience or an object that is perceived by the senses.
Story
An account of an incident or a series of events, either factual or invented.
Open Ending
An ambiguous conclusion to a story.
Objectivity
An attempt to tell the story without bias.
Character
Any person who plays a part in a narrative.
Psychological Approach
Critical approach to interpreting texts. Personal (author/reader) context. Focus on symbols and language that explains meanings of unconscious attention, often used to examine motives and actions of characters or motives and actions of author.
Historical Approach
Critical approach to interpreting texts. Social/Cultural context. Assumes that it matters when and where something was written, and by whom, including facts about the author's life and status, the larger history around the author and the work, and the intellectual paradigms available to the author and the reader made by forces of history that reveal doctrines of conduct, etiquette, and law. Assumes that literature is not "real life" but that one can illuminate the other.
Feminist Approach
Critical approach to interpreting texts. Social/Cultural context. Assumes that your literary interpretations are influenced by your own status, including gender, class, race, sexual preference, religion, and much else, with sustained focus on these issues.
Graphic Storytelling
Substantial single volumes of pictorial images arranged in a sequence to narrate a story with or without words.
Explication
The act of explaining or interpreting the meaning of a text.
Mood
The atmosphere that is created by the author's choice of details and the words with which to present them.
Theme
The central, unifying point or idea that is made concrete, developed, and explored in the action and the imagery of a work of fiction.
Diction
The choice and arrangement of specific words and types of words to tell a story.
Narration
The dramatic telling of the events that make up the action of a plot of a story.
Tone
The expression of the author's attitude toward his or her subject matter.
Resolution
The falling action of a narrative, in which the conflict is settled.
Moral
The lesson to be drawn from a story.
Denotation
The literal meaning of words.
Protagonist
The main character or hero of the story.
Atmosphere
The mood, feeling, or quality of life in a story as conveyed by the author's choices of language and organization in describing the setting which the speech and activity of the characters takes place.
Editorial Point of View
The occasion in a text in third-person narration when the narrator adds his or her own comments, which may or may not be the opinions of the author.
Conflict
The opposition presented to the main character/protagonist of a narrative by another character (an antagonist), by events or situations, by fate, or by some aspect of the protagonist's own personality or nature.
Point of View
The perspective from which an author lets the reader view the action of a narrative; thus, the choice of who tells the story.
Dramatic irony
The reader's awareness of a discrepancy between a character's perception of his or her own situation or activities, or of their consequences, and the true nature of that situation or those consequences
Verbal Irony
The reader's awareness of a discrepancy between the real meaning of the situation being presented and the literal meaning of the author's words in presenting it.
Irony
The reader's or audience's awareness of a reality that differs from the reality the characters perceive or the literal meaning of the author's words.
Unity
The relation of all parts of a work to one central or organizing principle that forms them into a complete and coherent whole.
Plot
The series of events in a narrative that form the action, in which a character or characters face an internal or external conflict that propels the story to a climax and an ultimate resolution.
Narrator
The teller of a story.
Third-Person Narration
The telling of a story by a by detached, usually anonymous narrator.
Impartial Omniscience
The telling of a story by a third-person narrator whose omniscience does not allow for any evaluation or judgment of the characters and their activities.
Action
The things that happen in a story's plot -- what the characters do and what is done to them.
Imagery
The use of images, especially of a consistent pattern of related images -- often figurative ones -- to convey an overall sensory impression.
Description
The use of language to present the features of a person, place, or thing.
Dialogue
The written presentation of words spoken by characters in a narrative.
